LETTER: Cape Breton provincial park must be protected

Cape Breton Post

Published: Jan 22 at 3:42 p.m.

Letter to the Editor

This is an open letter to Stephen McNeil, Premier of the Province of Nova Scotia:

Dear Sir,

In 2001, when West Mabou Beach was designated a Nova Scotia Provincial Park, my family and friends celebrated in the belief that this natural jewel would finally be protected, for all time, for the enjoyment of all Nova Scotians, Canadians and visitors.

Since that time there have been many days when the beach parking lot overflows and a half-kilometer beach driveway becomes an exuberant migration of children and their sand buckets skipping with joy to swim and play in the sand and waves.

My family often camped on the bluff above the beach, and some of my earliest memories are of Mabou Convent nuns lifting the hems of their long black habits to frolic like birds in the surf while children splashed and families picnicked about them.

In 1961, coastal property, including the main access to this beach, came up for sale. My mother first tried to persuade the village of Mabou to purchase the land as a public park to protect public access to the beach. At the time, no one in Mabou believed the public would ever be denied access to Nova Scotia beaches, and felt no urgency. So my parents, together with two other families, bought the 108 coastal acres to assure continued public access and conservation of this extraordinary stretch of beach, dunes and wetlands.

For the next 20 years, as another generation enjoyed unlimited access to the beach, few people knew who owned the land.

In 1982 the Province of Nova Scotia expropriated the land “for a public purpose; namely the purpose of establishing a recreational area FOR THE PUBLIC.” The next 20 years involved intense, costly and often bitter negotiations in which those who wanted the province to live up to its stated purpose of establishing a recreational area for THE PUBLIC, and various aspiring developers who wanted to turn the public expropriation into a range of private uses for private profit, fought for control of this land.

Thus our joy in 2001 when, after 40 years, West Mabou Beach was declared a Nova Scotia Provincial Park, to be owned and enjoyed by all the public, and all 500-plus acres were declared protected from development. This is particularly significant as neighbouring beaches including the Colindale Beach, Inverness Beach Number Two, Public Fishing Road to Port Ban Beach, Dunvegan Beach, to name just a few to the north and south of Mabou Beach, have lost public access.

What a shock to read that the Nova Scotia government, the very people charged to protect the public good, is contemplating allowing Cabot Links, a private for-profit golf company (U.S. owned no less) to take over some of this precious, irreplaceable fragile dune and coast land for its own private development.

At a time when 100 of Canada’s MPs and Senators have signed a letter urging EXPANSION of protected natural lands, how on earth could the Nova Scotia government contemplate turning public land over to a private developer?

I urge you to honour the trust placed in you by the people of the Province of Nova Scotia by protecting and preserving West Mabou Beach, and all Nova Scotia public lands .